So now that we have had some time to get geared up and get some helms with a meta socket I was wondering what folks have been using for meta gems.

I have seen folks still using the old Relentless Earthsiege (+21 agi, 3% crit damage), the new Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond (+54 crit, 3% crit damage) and also the Fleet Shadowspirit Diamond (+54 mastery, minor run speed increase).

I personally am using the Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond. I had thought of trying the Fleet Shadowspirit Diamond, but at the time no one on the server had it yet. The geming requirements for the Chaotic really limit my options with gems and socket bonues.

Being that we don't make use of the minor run speed increase of the Fleet gem, has anyone found that the mastery + better geming options off set the loss of 3% crit damage? Thanks

The requirements for the crit, +crit damage are still broken. I show them as requiring more blue then red gems. Since I'm also tanking heroics and using the same head piece I actually use the new +81stamina +2% armor meta. I'm a JC so I had to cut it anyway to level my JC and might as well use it.

As I go more to pure cat DPS, and they fix the meata requirements I'll switch to the new +54 crit, +3% crit damage meta. Till then I'm gonna use the tank meta.

First of all the chaotic gem requirements (more blue then red) are not broken. It was an intended change that Blizzard later announced they wished to rethink, but it could not be hot fixed. It would require a full patch for the work to be done. As the 4.03/4.03a patch came and went with no changes we have to assume that these requirements will not change until the next level of content is delivered (assume 4 months).

That being said I am currently involved with progression raiding now and so everyone is looking for every edge we can get. Gemming, flasking, and enchanting will never be as important as it is right now. The reason for this is our gear will continue to scale though content, but meta gems/flasks/pots/enchants will remain the same. I myself tank heroics for my guild mates for gear/valor points, and will continue to do so though this tier of raiding. For that task I have a different helmet with the stam/armor gem. But for raids my primary role is cat dps.

My eyeballing figures tells me that 3% crit damage is going to beat out 54 mastery every time. However the cost of the 3% crit damage is that I will have to use 4 green gems (Mastery/Hit) if I use my JC gems just to get that bonus. The question is for this tier will being able to gem almost pure agility +54 mastery beat out crappy gemming + 3% crit damage. I don't think it will, but I don't have the math to support this. Has anyone done math relating to this yet? Or better share your experiences with your gemming choices. Thanks-Tinder

Raiding to me seems to be much easier then the heroics. We have killed 3 bosses and got close on a fourth. Best geared person has ilvl average of 345 which is just below heroic. I still have 3 ilvl 318 items and a 336 average which is about typical for my guild. Right now we die more on heroic bosses then raid bosses it seems.

Use the level 80 relentless. Based on testing I did with Mew on a tier 11 premade, even with the onerous "more blue than red" gemming requirements, it was still 100 dps better than the mastery meta. The 3% crit is simply better, even with the accompanying loss of agility in favor of mastery and hit. As for the level 80 relentless vs. the level 85 chaotic, 21 agility > 54 crit rating, although not by much. The level 80 relentless is about 10 dps better than the level 85 chaotic and is still our BIS gem for cat. On the bright side, the level 80 relentless is really cheap to get now...

Hopefully we will get a level 85 relentless soon, as it is sad that our BIS meta gem is from WOTLK.

I am currently using agi, agi/hit and mastery/hit gems to hit my meta requirements. Once the meta requirements change I expect to replace all of the mastery/hit gems and some of the agi/hit gems.

We have been doing 10 man content. The guild I was in in Wrath was strictly 10 man which actually made it harder. But right now we have so many people wanting to join our guild that the GL said he might go 25 man.

But I also remember the last time we did that. Fine for a few weeks then not enough showing up. Then a pain on who goes 10 man etc, etc.

Edit: As an example we were doing Algaroth (sp), the PvP boss in Tol Barad last night. We start off the fight and even before the first fire phase a DPS gets killed somehow. They first said to wipe it but we continued to fight. They did not want to use my rebirth so he stayed dead the whole fight. Mind you that we did not flask or eat food. I have just 3 enchants and others are using green gems etc. We end up killing the boss right at the enrage timer while being down a dps and did not use bloodlust. Most heroics are many times harder then this.

Everyone has access to the same gear, but in 25 man each person is responsable for 6% more damage to complete the encounter, and 600dps to beat the enrage. On top of that the fire barage at 66% and 33% requires 25 man raids to spread out much further to avoid fire which will put ranged dps out of range, and require an extra 1-5 seconds for melee to get back on the tanks. For these calculations I did not include tanks as there is always 2, and both have access to the same gear so nothing changes.

All I can say is wow. We had 2 tanks 5 dps and 3 healers. And one of the dps died as I mentioned. But if i recall a quick check of recount showed that I was at 12.2K dps and the other 3 surviving dps were right with me at 12K. Of course the tanks were doing some damage and so were the ehalers now and then. It just seems it was too easy especially since a dps died so early in the fight.